Union President says Buffalo teachers are running out of patience
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BUFFALO, N.Y. — The President of the Buffalo Teachers Federation said the city's educators are mad at the school district.
"I'm not going to threaten anything, but it's beginning to look a lot like Chicago," Phil Rumore said.
Tuesday, a judge upheld an arbitrator's decision that the forced transfer of teachers from three low achieving schools violated the teachers' collective bargaining agreement.
"They've thrown down the gauntlet and said, 'Hey we don't care what your contract says. We don't care about any of these things,' and the teachers are supposed to say, 'Oh, thank you very much.' I don't think so," he said. "When half of them have to be moved even though their doing an excellent job, that's insane."
The district has the option now of appealing the judge's decision.
"What they're doing is trying to delay, delay, delay so they can go back to court and say, 'Hey, it's too late to do anything now," Rumore said.
Phil Rumore said that would be a bad idea.
"I think they might have already gone too far now by appealing it the first time. If they appeal it the second time, I can't be responsible for the anger," he said.
Meanwhile, the union is working with the district on a teacher evaluation system to secure millions of dollars in school improvement money.
"First of all, the teachers don't like the idea of being judged by a student's standardized test score which most people agree doesn't make sense," Rumore said. "We've been without a contract and the board just continues to violate our contract. It's not going to be easy, especially now."
Rumore said teachers have been without a new contract for eight years and have had enough.
"The last thing you want to do is go on strike. It's disruptive," he said. "But sometimes like in Chicago there's no options."
The union said teachers could be back to their original schools within a week if the district decides not to appeal.
YNN reached out to the Board of Education and the Superintendent's office. The superintendent refused to comment on camera Tuesday.